- 24 Jan 2021 17:13
#15152700
Have we become dull people by watching TV, listening to iPods and staring at our phones?
Growing up with three generations of my family, there was a noticable decay between my grandparents and my nephews in the art ot telling stories. My grandfather was an excellent and entertaining story-teller, and so were his friends and neighbors. The latest generations are good at downloading apps and interacting with game controls.
By letting machines tell us stories instead of other people, a great human interaction skill may have been amputated, and I mean this "amputation" in the sense of Mcluhan's idea that each technology creates extensions (like how media allows a wider variety of products to consume) as well as the amputations (like how we lost the ability to tell stories to one another).
What does it mean about our civilization's "progress" when going out to a cafe with friends means staring at phones with a group of people for a few hours?
Why do the males of countries like Algeria have such an animated and personally-participatory cafe life, telling personal stories interspersed with world events and metaphorical abstractions?
Where have all the words gone and will this do us great harm?
"I interact with, therefore, I am"
soundtrack
Complicity: giving billions of dollars worth of drill bits and cannibal recipes
to Jeffrey Dahmer
Have we become dull people by watching TV, listening to iPods and staring at our phones?
Growing up with three generations of my family, there was a noticable decay between my grandparents and my nephews in the art ot telling stories. My grandfather was an excellent and entertaining story-teller, and so were his friends and neighbors. The latest generations are good at downloading apps and interacting with game controls.
By letting machines tell us stories instead of other people, a great human interaction skill may have been amputated, and I mean this "amputation" in the sense of Mcluhan's idea that each technology creates extensions (like how media allows a wider variety of products to consume) as well as the amputations (like how we lost the ability to tell stories to one another).
James McElroy wrote:Storytelling is central to any civilization, so its sudden failure across society should set off alarm bells. Culture inevitably reflects the selection process that sorts people into the upper class, and today’s insipid stories suggest a profound failure of this sorting mechanism.
What does it mean about our civilization's "progress" when going out to a cafe with friends means staring at phones with a group of people for a few hours?
Why do the males of countries like Algeria have such an animated and personally-participatory cafe life, telling personal stories interspersed with world events and metaphorical abstractions?
Where have all the words gone and will this do us great harm?
"I interact with, therefore, I am"
soundtrack
Complicity: giving billions of dollars worth of drill bits and cannibal recipes
to Jeffrey Dahmer